[74] The 'Warrior,' at this time standing by herself, was a vessel of 9,210 tons. Thirty-five years later the advance made in our ideas of dimension and power may be judged from the fact that on Jan. 31, 1895, the 'Majestic' was launched. Her tonnage was 14,900, an increase of 5,690 on her predecessor. Unlike the 'Warrior' of an earlier date, the 'Majestic' was only one of several, the building of which began at the end of 1894, the last parliamentary record of which reaches to the spring of 1896. Briefly to summarize the results that emphasize the contrasts between the two epochs, the average size of vessels built at the present time approaches thrice that of twenty years ago. Then too, steel was not used for ship building; now it is gradually supplanting iron. Of late there have been more ships built than formerly on a less colossal scale. The result is partially due to the dimensions of the Suez Canal whose depth is not equal to an ironclad of the first magnitude. Time, apparently, is still needed to show if our seamen can develop a skill as great in handling these iron leviathans as in controlling those wooden craft, their management of which was the admiration of the world. [75] Apart from the parliamentary papers bearing on the navy, Captain Eardley Wilmot's _The Development of Navies_ is the literary authority that has been found most useful in preparing this chapter. The writer is however, chiefly indebted to the details with which he has been kindly and copiously supplied by the present First Lord of the Admiralty, Mr Goschen and his staff, especially Lord Encombe. [76] In the nineteenth century, on a much smaller scale, exhibitions had been held in Paris 1801, 1806, 1836, 1849, as well as in Belgium, Germany and Spain. The true precursor of the '51 Exhibition has been discovered by Mr Molesworth (History ii. p. 363) in the Covent Garden Free Trade Bazaar 1846. [77] Macaulay's House of Commons speeches in the 1832 Reform Bill debates are famous. When he was best known as a writer, he had been Secretary at War (1839) and Paymaster General (1846). Lytton at the zenith of his literary fame had been Colonial Secretary under Lord Derby in 1858, before he was made a peer in 1866. [78] The vitality of Purcell's fame at the 200th anniversary of his death was attested by the celebrations of 1895. Since then a very remarkable tribute to his greatness has been given accidentally in an unexpected quarter. The great German classical authority, the Bach Gesellschaft (vol. xlii. p. 250) prints as a doubtful work of Bach, Purcell's Toccata in A which is given in the Harpsichord and Organ volume of the Purcell Society (p. 42). That a work of Purcell's should have been mistaken for one of the very greatest organ writer's who has ever lived, and that by Bach's own jealous countrymen, is a panegyric more significant than words on our own great national composer.